


Of All The Bad Ideas

by SlimeQueen



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Cuddling, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Love Notes, M/M, Making Out, Misunderstandings, Pining, Secret Admirer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 19:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14339082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlimeQueen/pseuds/SlimeQueen
Summary: Donghyuck has been pining after Mark Lee since the first year of high school, and now they’re four years deep and Donghyuck’s feelings are still hurtling towards imminent heartbreak. He's always been an impulsive decision maker, but he should have thought a bit harder on this one.





	Of All The Bad Ideas

**Author's Note:**

> uhh did someone say cliche high school au bc here i am  
> (Please don't repost it anywhere else without my permission!)

Mark Lee is kind of the biggest idiot Donghyuck has ever met in his life.

Mark moves to their school from fucking _Canada_ , which he insists Donghyuck pronounces wrong, but Donghyuck’s sure if he tried doing Mark’s stupid American accent, he’d be able to.

The first time Donghyuck encounters Mark is during the middle of his first year in high school. Mark’s standing at the forefront of the room, looking awkward and out of place in his clean starchy uniform. Donghyuck sits by the window behind Jeno and Jaemin, and he leans forward, taps Jaemin on the shoulder and whispers, “Look at his name.”

On the pocket of Mark’s uniform jacket, where neat Korean letters are _supposed_ to be decorating the material, it says in English block letters, “ _MARK LEE”._ Donghyuck sweeps his eyes over him, sizing him up. He’s kind of cute, in a weird way. Like he hasn’t grown into his own body yet, baby faced and clumsy-limbed.

The teacher takes him by the scrawny shoulders, says to the class, “Canada’s such a long way to come from. Why don’t you introduce yourself, Minhyung?”

He shifts from foot to foot, the tips of his ears bright red. “I, uh, I actually go by Mark.” He says with a meek smile.

“I actually go by Mark,” Donghyuck mimics his accent, quiet enough for the elderly teacher to miss, but loud enough for everyone else in the vicinity. A couple snickers resonate here and there, and Mark’s face flushes even deeper.

The teacher misinterprets their giggling as excitement and tells everyone to calm down, and then pushes Mark gently in the direction of one of the only empty seats in the room. Which – just his luck – is next to Donghyuck.

Mark bites his lip, wide eyes darting around as if searching for an escape, and Donghyuck leans back as far as he can in his seat, a grin sliding onto his mouth. “Canada, huh,” he says as Mark sets his stuff down.

Mark seems resolute to ignore him, taking things out of his bag and setting them down on the shared desk one by one. His jaw is tight, eyes staring determinedly down at his crisp new review book.

Donghyuck bites back a giggle and decides not to tell him he’s staring at the wrong page.

-

Donghyuck’s sure Mark becoming a part of their friend group is all Jeno’s fault.

After a week of watching Mark eat by himself at his desk instead of going down the street to the convenience store next to the school like all the normal kids, Jeno grabs Donghyuck by the back of his uniform jacket and pulls him back as he’s about to make a break for it.

“Mark’s eating alone again.” Jeno hisses, “Don’t you have any sympathy?”

Donghyuck twists his mouth in contemplation, glancing Mark’s way quickly before turning to Jeno and shrugging, widening his eyes guilelessly.

“You’re…” Jaemin trails off, shaking his head. “You sit next to him, go ask him to come to lunch with us.”

“But–”

“Go!” Jeno and Jaemin say at once, and Donghyuck hates how easily they team up against him. Sometimes he feels like he’s on a whole other wavelength from the other two boys.

“Fine,” he grumbles, turning back to his desk. Mark looks kind of pitiful, eyes glued to his stupid “ _Korean for beginners – Level 5_ ” book, which Donghyuck had stolen a peek at earlier in the week and deemed outdated and useless.

“Hey,” he says as he approaches. For a second, Mark doesn’t look up, not realizing he’s being spoken to, but then Donghyuck says, “Mark Lee,” and he jolts up.

“Do you want to go eat with us? You’re getting dusty, sitting at this desk for so long.” Donghyuck swipes a thumb over Mark’s cheek and pretends to blow aforementioned dust off it, and Mark flinches back at the contact, blinking rapidly in confusion.

Damn it. Jeno and Jaemin are always telling him he shouldn’t be so touchy with people he doesn’t know, but he’s always forgetting. He tries grinning, hoping it doesn’t look too weird.

Mark seems to gather his bearings enough to give a dazed little nod, shoving his books into his desk and standing up too quickly, making the chair under him squeal unpleasantly as it’s dragged across the floor, his knees hitting the underside of the desk.

“Careful,” Donghyuck says, immediately reaching out a hand to steady him when he crumples in pain.

Mark straightens slowly, licks his thin lips nervously. He looks like a bird, eyes wide, brows pulled over them in delicate arches. “I thought you hated me,” he says, eyes darting between Donghyuck’s unimpressed face and Jeno and Jaemin standing by the door.

“Hate you?” Donghyuck asks, confusion rising up inside him, “Why would you say that?”

“Because you–” Mark shakes his head quickly. “Never mind. It’s nothing. Let’s go eat.”

Mark Lee is an idiot, but Lee Donghyuck is an even bigger idiot, because he grins wide at Mark, and follows him out the door and falls so easily right into his charms.

Donghyuck’s an impulsive decision maker, but he should have thought a bit harder on this one, because it’s one thing to think the new stranger sitting next to you is cute, but it’s another thing to grow hardcore feelings for your best friend.

Of course, he hadn’t known then that asking Mark such a small question would lead to such drastic consequences, but Donghyuck’s only fourteen and Mark is lonely and maybe Donghyuck’s tired of third wheeling Jaemin and Jeno all the time. Mark’s weird and foreign and still closed off and shy, but he’s also cute and when he grins at Donghyuck and offers him half his melon bread, it makes Donghyuck’s stomach do – do _something_ he doesn’t want to think about.

Donghyuck is so screwed.

-

“Johnny-hyung’s boyfriend accidentally sent me nudes again,” Mark says, grim-faced as he sits down.

Donghyuck grabs for the phone, but Mark stretches his arm out and holds it out of his reach, pushing him away with his other hand. “Trust me, it’s not anything good.”

Donghyuck’s seen Jung Jaehyun’s nudes on numerous occasions before and he’d beg to differ, but Mark looks so solemn that he ultimately drops it. Jaehyun is kind of a ditz, and Mark’s number is saved on his phone as _Cutie #2_ , which happens to be right under his boyfriend, Mark’s brother, or, as Donghyuck will forever call him, _Cutie #1_. Long story short, Mark ends up receiving way too many pictures of Jaehyun’s ass, which he’s all too glad to share with Jaemin and Donghyuck when they ask.

Of course, Jaemin is also kind of a ditz, saying quite loudly, “It’s the guy who likes getting spanked!” The first time he’d encountered Jaehyun in person, making the older boy go so red in the face that Donghyuck had been sure for a second that he was going to pop a blood vessel.

Donghyuck’s much more sensible, so he’s the only one allowed to see anymore, no matter how much Jaemin pouts about it.

“At least they’re good quality,” Jeno laments, his mouth full of crushed up potato chips and milk.

Donghyuck makes a face, slapping his arm weakly. “Gross,” he complains halfheartedly.

They’re all more than a little burnt out from exams, the end of school approaching both too quickly and too slowly, each day passing in bouts of summery sunshine and long rambling lessons about things Donghyuck really couldn’t care less about.

Mark nudges him with his shoulder, and Donghyuck glances up, blinking away his daze. Sitting in the sun lately has been making him sleepy. Mark likes to tease and say that he’s like a cat, napping on warm surfaces, and Donghyuck would refute, but once Mark caught him asleep on the bleachers waiting for basketball practice to end so they could walk home together.

“Are you going to eat your pudding cup?” Mark asks, already reaching out for it.

Donghyuck lets him take the pudding, stretching out his tight limbs. He’d fallen asleep during math the hour before and had been rudely awakened by the teacher slamming a meterstick down on his desk and sending him out of the room for the rest of class.

Luckily, Jaemin is not only the class president, but also a certified genius probably, so he slides his notebook across the table to let Donghyuck copy the notes he’d missed while squatting outside in the hall.

“Oh,” Jaemin mumbles, leafing through his book, eyes raking over meticulously handwritten notes. “I missed a section while I was in the bathroom. It was kind of important, so I’d go grab Mark hyung’s book or something.”

Mark hums, rummaging around his bag. “I think I left it inside.”

“Well, I don’t want to go get it,” Donghyuck complains. “Mark-hyung, make Jeno do it.”

“Me?” Jeno splutters, hand splaying out on his chest. “I’m not the one who can’t stay awake whenever we start talking about calculus.”

“Jeno,” Mark says with a painstakingly long sigh, “Please.”

Jeno shoots Mark a wounded look (Donghyuck doesn’t know how he remains so stoic – Jeno’s puppy eyes make Donghyuck feel like a monster whenever they’re turned on him) and gets up.

“It’s hopeless anyways,” Donghyuck groans when he’s gone, “I’m going to fail this last semester, and I can’t even bring myself to care.”

Mark gently pats his head, eyes wide and sympathetic. Donghyuck hates how good of a look it is on him. “If you want, you can come over after basketball practice and I can help you study.”

Mark always makes time for Donghyuck, no matter how busy or tired he is, and for that, Donghyuck is always going to be grateful, but Mark’s biggest virtue is also his vice.

Donghyuck _knows_ how exhausted Mark is after practice most days. He’s seen Mark return home and head directly for his bed, collapsing into it and passing out within five minutes of walking into his house, not even bothering to take his uniform off.

The older boy doesn’t know when to stop, spreading himself so thin trying to fulfil every responsibility and satisfy everyone. It makes Donghyuck feel guilty for being so needy, for taking up so much of Mark’s time.

But Donghyuck’s always been too greedy for his own good. “Okay,” he agrees, “I’ll be over around five.”

“Guys!” Jeno’s voice interrupts, and they all turn to find the dark haired boy sprinting towards them, Mark’s notebook in one hand and a folded piece of paper clutched in the other. “ _Guys_ , you won’t believe what I just found.”

Mark’s eyebrows wrinkle together. “What is that?”

Jeno takes a minute to catch his breath, then drops the paper onto the table. “I went into Mark’s desk to grab the notebook when this paper fell out, right?” He says breathlessly, “So, of course, I opened it because I thought it was an old worksheet or something but look what it says!”

Mark swiftly grabs the paper before any of them can see, eyes scanning the note. He blinks.

“Let me see,” Donghyuck whines, making grabby hands for it. Mark holds it out of his reach, still reading.

“I wanna see too,” Jaemin complains, “This isn’t fair.”

Mark’s face has gone quite red, cheeks flushed. He says, “It’s a love letter. Well. Sort of a love letter.”

“Are you going to let us see or not?” Jaemin demands, holding a hand out for it.

“Not,” Mark folds the note again, tucking it into his backpack. “It’s private. Jeno, you shouldn’t have opened it either.”

Donghyuck crosses his arms in front of his chest. His heart’s beating too hard, and he really hopes his panic isn’t showing on his face. “Who’d like _you_?” He asks, “They must not know what a loser you are.”

Mark’s ears are still red. “It’s sweet,” he says softly, “Don’t make fun of them for it.”

Donghyuck’s own face is warm, but he runs his tongue along the top row of his teeth, sits back down in his seat. “But you don’t like anyone, so it’s a rejection anyway.”

“Besides, it’s not a confession,” Jeno adds helpfully. “It just sounds like someone likes him, but they didn’t sign it.”

Mark’s been confessed to a couple times throughout high school. Ever since he’d joined the basketball team and had broadened out, they’ve become more frequent, but he’s politely declined every one. He’s not interested, he tells them with an incline of the head, apologizing and walking away.

“Can we please drop it,” Mark says shortly, “It must have taken a lot of courage for them to write it, so let’s just. Just drop it.”

Jaemin rubs his lips together. “I guess,” he says, then stretches his long arms over his head. “Lunch is almost over anyways, lets make the most of the sunshine before we have to go back inside for the rest of the day.”

They divert their attention to the weather then, and all thoughts of the mysterious note slip from their minds.

-

Donghyuck doesn’t know why he’d done it.

Mark had gone to the bathroom sometime towards the end of science, and Donghyuck had been doodling in a spare notebook, trying his hardest to listen to the teacher talk.

He writes the note half as a joke, intending to throw it in the trash the second the pen leaves the paper, but looking down at it, he can’t bring himself to toss it. He wonders what would happen if Mark found it. Would his face light up in excitement? Would he be confused?

It’s so dumb. It says some stupid shit he thought of off the top of his head. _You look beautiful when you laugh. I love the way your face scrunches up. Sometimes I think about kissing you when you look like that._

He takes a deep breath, reaches over to Mark’s desk, and slides it in between his math and language textbooks. Sitting back up leaves Donghyuck’s heart oddly uneven, anxiety fluttering up inside him for the rest of the class. When Mark gets back from the bathroom, he stares at the other boy, asks him under his breath, “Are you okay? You look like you’re going to be sick.”

“I’m just tired,” Donghyuck lies.

The thing is this.

Donghyuck has been pining after Mark Fucking Lee since the first year of high school, and now they’re four years deep and Donghyuck’s feelings are still hurtling towards imminent heartbreak because sometime between basketball practices and early morning jogs, Mark’s grown into his broad shoulders, the baby fat melting off his cheeks to reveal sharp cheekbones.

Sometime between Donghyuck changing his shorts for tight, ripped up jeans, and a string of boyfriends that leave him unsatisfied to no end, Donghyuck realizes that his little crush on Mark Lee, who still insists on his name on the class roster being in English, whose phone case says his own fucking name, who is there for Donghyuck no matter what, is growing uncontrollably into something deeper.

He’s loved Mark from afar, in peace for the past couple years, but as the last days of school approach, he finds himself unsatisfied with the platonic smiles and touches.

Maybe he has no idea what he’s doing, and maybe this is going to ruin their friendship forever, but Donghyuck is _tired_ of keeping it all in until he feels like he’s going to burst.

He’s not sure what he just set into motion, but he knows it’s too late to take it back now.

-

Donghyuck’s palms are still sweating as he stands in front of Mark’s house, hand clenched tightly around the strap of his schoolbag.

Johnny’s loitering in the living room when he lets himself in, and he waves at Donghyuck, saying “Mark’s upstairs, but I think he passed out.”

When Donghyuck reaches Mark’s room, he sees that the older boy is indeed passed out, curled up in the corner of his bed and fast asleep. Donghyuck doesn’t know how anyone can look so good sleeping with their mouth open.

Unfortunately, Mark’s the lightest sleeper he’s ever met, and even the creak and click of him closing the bedroom door makes him stir, dark lashes fluttering against pale skin.

“Hyuck?” Mark mumbles, shifting slightly, his voice soft and broken from sleep, “Oh shit, I was supposed to–”

“It’s fine,” Donghyuck interjects quickly, before Mark can find a way to blame himself. “I shouldn’t have asked you when I knew you had practice.”

Mark rolls over, long limbs sprawled over his bed, and he rubs a hand over his face, dragging himself up into sitting with difficulty. “No,” he murmurs. “No, it’s on me. Let me just make some coffee or something and we can get started.”

Mark leaves Donghyuck to get out their books and papers while he goes to grab something to eat and a cup of coffee.

He takes his time grabbing his pens out of his bag, setting them on Mark’s desk one by one in a neat row. It’s not until the last pen’s been placed on the wooden surface that he notices a scrap of paper folded tightly laying on top of Mark’s closed laptop.

Even knowing exactly what it is, Donghyuck’s stomach flutters with nerves when he picks it up and unfolds it. His own handwriting stares back up at him, and Donghyuck feels so _dumb_ , thinking something like this could possibly ever work. Mark is nothing if not an idiot. Of course, he’d never be able to read deeper into it and understand who’d left it.

In a way, that makes him feel better. Donghyuck’s scared of constantly having to keep his feelings for Mark hidden, but he’d be even more frightened of the other option. Mark knowing about how he feels, Mark rejecting him; that’s too much for him to think about.

The door opens then, and Donghyuck jumps in surprise, the note falling from his hands and landing on the desk. He whips around, the panic of being caught rising in his throat.

“I wonder who it was,” Mark comments simply, a mug of steaming tea in one hand, a packet of shrimp chips in the other. The latter, he tosses in Donghyuck’s direction.

“Probably one of those girls in the year under us.” Donghyuck deflects easily, folding the note back up and sliding it on top of the laptop lid again. “You know they think you’re so cool for being foreign.”

“I’m barely foreign.” Mark frowns, sitting down on the edge of the bed, fingers clasped around his tea.

“I’m barely foreign,” Donghyuck mocks, deepening his voice and curling his syllables like Mark had when he’d first moved here. “It’s not like I’m bilingual and good at everything I try, or anything.”

“You know you just said I’m good at everything, right?” Mark says, smiling slightly and taking a sip of tea.

Fuck. Donghyuck had not meant to do that. “Shut up,” he replies, turning back to their textbooks. “Help me figure out what this means so I can go home already.”

Mark sighs, but the way he hides the tilt of his mouth behind the rim of his mug gives away the affection behind it.

Mark explains how to finish the homework problems thoroughly, pausing only a couple times to yawn enormously. He only has to ram his elbow into Donghyuck’s side to regain his attention twice, which is huge improvement from the handful of times he has to do it in class.

Donghyuck likes listening to Mark speak, even when he’s talking about calculus and he only understands half of it. Mark talks exaggeratedly and with his hands, turning to him every few minutes to say, “get it?” and waits for him to nod before he continues. Donghyuck’s eyes trail down the skinny length of his fingers as they splay out dramatically.

He ends up learning the bare minimum, but as long as he’s not flunking, he doesn’t care anymore. Freedom’s just out of reach and heading towards them quickly, and Donghyuck would much rather watch Mark’s thin pink lips form words that mean nothing, wondering if his mouth would taste like the tea he’s been sipping at.

When Mark finishes explaining, he turns the paper over and hands it off to Donghyuck to work through some problems by himself and settles on his bed to finish his own assignments.

It’s a struggle getting through them, but Donghyuck manages to half ass the answers enough that the teacher will give him credit and deems himself done.

“Check over these for me,” he says, turning around, only to realize a second later that it’s pointless.

Mark’s sitting on the far side of his bed, his back against the wall, and Donghyuck feels his heart skip a beat. His laptop’s still in front of him, but Mark’s head is tipped back against the headboard of his bed, eyes shut, exhaustion getting the best of him.

Donghyuck can’t help but spend too much time tracing the sharp slope of Mark’s nose with his eyes, lingering on the dark spiky lashes that splay out from his closed lids, the little mole on his cheek that Donghyuck wants so badly to press his lips to.

Giving him the note really hadn’t been the smartest move, because now Donghyuck’s filled with anticipation for something that’ll never happen. Mark isn’t going to wake up and magically know it was him and reciprocate his feelings.

In fact, he’s sure it’ll fade to the back of his memory like the other confessions have. It’ll become a dumb joke they mention now and then when they’re hanging out. _Remember when Mark had a secret admirer?_

There’s a lump in his throat. He quickly shoves his finished math paper into his bag, closes the lid to Mark’s laptop, pushing it towards the foot of the bed away from the sleeping boy, and slips out.

Johnny catches him on his way out the door, giving him an easy smile. “You’re not hanging around for dinner tonight?” he asks, because Donghyuck usually does.

Donghyuck shakes his head mutely, too scared that his voice will come out cracked and awful if he tries to speak.

Unfortunately, Mark’s brother is weirdly good at reading people’s feelings. Before Donghyuck can gather the rest of his dignity and make for the door, the older boy’s walking over on long legs (they used to tease Mark about it – “ _Why are you so short when your brother’s so tall?_ ” but that had been before Mark had shot up taller than Jeno and Donghyuck) and wraps the younger boy up in a hug.

“If Mark said something, you know he’s kind of dumb. Don’t worry about it, he’ll probably come groveling in a couple days.”

Mark hadn’t said anything to hurt his feelings. In fact, it had been quite the opposite. Mark had been so kind without even knowing who’d left the note, and that only makes Donghyuck fall deeper.

He takes a deep breath. Mark and Johnny use the same cologne, and if he closes his eyes, doesn’t think about it too hard, hugging Johnny almost feels like it’s Mark.

“Thanks, hyung.” he mutters roughly, pulling away. “It’s not about him, though.”

Johnny gives him a doubtful look but he must sense that Donghyuck doesn’t want to talk about it, because he ruffles his hair and sends him on his way home.

-

Donghyuck really should know better by now.

Mark’s not in class for a doctor’s appointment the next week, and Donghyuck can’t stop staring at his empty desk, thinking about how easy it would be to put another note in it.

He looks up at Jeno and Jaemin’s backs furtively, then back down to the clean white paper on the desk in front of him.

He sighs, picks up his pen, and begins writing.

-

“Oh,” Mark murmurs, eyes widening as another paper falls out of his desk. “The fourth one this month.”

Donghyuck has been composing soliloquys about Mark’s beautiful slender hands, the slope of his neck, the kindness in his eyes, a million other things he can’t get out of his head, and it’s driving him crazy how the older boy responds.

Mark carefully slides the note into his bag along with the rest.

He hasn’t let anyone else read them, and Jaemin and Jeno are beginning to get suspicious, debating with Donghyuck when Mark’s at practice, “Should we just go into the locker room and steal his bag? What if he put it in his locker?”

Donghyuck feels panic flare up in him at the idea. He’d quickly lied, “Mark definitely locks his bag inside the locker. Someone on the team got their phone stolen last year, and now they have to be really careful with their stuff.”

 Today’s note is particularly embarrassing. _I think about you all the time. Sometimes it makes me sad thinking that you’ll never know who I am, but I’ve come to terms with one-sided love._

“I don’t get what they see in you,” Donghyuck grins, leaning as far back in his chair as he can without it tipping backwards. “Maybe they’re just confused and they meant to put it in my desk.”

Mark frowns. “I thought about that,” he admits, and Donghyuck’s stomach flips oddly at the thought. “But they said when I speak English it makes them wish they understood better. And not to be rude or anything, but your English kind of sucks.”

Donghyuck makes a face. “Sorry we can’t all be from Canada.”

“Yeah…” Mark squints at him, as if sizing him up. Donghyuck hopes he can’t tell that he’s sweating under the scrutiny. Finally, Mark takes a deep breath and ducks down to rummage through his desk again, and Donghyuck exhales, feeling his body go slack.

Every time Mark finds a new note, it has him breathless with anxiety, afraid that this is the note that will give him away to the older boy. As much as Donghyuck likes to call him one, Mark isn’t an idiot.

“Lee Minhyung,” the teacher calls sharply, “Maybe you’d like to direct your attention from your desk and onto the board so you can solve this equation.”

Mark straightens almost immediately, much to Donghyuck’s amusement. He snickers as the older boy struggles to solve the problem, saved only when Kim Yerim, the girl who sits on the other side of the room whom Mark had dated for all of three weeks last year before they’d broken up, raises her hand and says the answer for him.

-

“It couldn’t be _Yerim_ , could it?” Jeno hisses after class, when Donghyuck is grabbing his wallet from his desk, “She’s the one who broke up with _Mark_.”

  Jaemin and Mark had gone ahead to save them spots in line at the convenience store. “I don’t think it’s her.”

“Why not? Everyone knows she and her boyfriend broke up last month, and the other cheerleaders said she may have a thing for Mark again. Koeun told me herself.”

Donghyuck thinks Koeun should keep her big mouth shut, but he painstakingly takes his time putting every pen in its place in his desk, then looks up at the other boy. Jeno’s eyes are wide, his expression open, and Donghyuck wonders what would happen if he just…

He says, “What if I told you I know who it is?”

“Who?” Jeno says, urgency coloring his voice. He ducks down so the last stragglers in the room won’t hear. “Tell me, I swear I won’t tell Mark that I know.”

“What if I said its… me?” Donghyuck asks more than says. He looks up slowly, gauging Jeno’s reaction.

The older boy looks a bit dazed, blinking a couple times to process his words. “What do you mean, what if?” he asks carefully.

“I mean that it is me, obviously,” Donghyuck snaps.

“Wait, hang on. You like Mark? You _like_ Mark? Mark of all people?” Jeno is whisper-yelling furiously, eyes bright with disbelief. “ _You_?”

“Me,” Donghyuck groans, burying his head in his hands. “God, can you please stop saying it?”

It feels good sharing his secret after so long. He’s had it holed up inside him for so long, he’d nearly forgotten how nice it is to have a confidant. Jeno leans down even further, whispers, “You’re the one who thinks Mark-hyung looks beautiful when he laughs?”

Donghyuck shrieks, leaps up to smack Jeno’s bicep. “Shut _up_ ,” he cries, “don’t say that shit.”

“You’re the one who thought it up,” Jeno says, arms raised defensively in front of himself, but the grin on his face is wide. “Don’t worry, I’d never tell him. Your secret’s safe with me.”

Jeno grabs Donghyuck by the arm, practically drags him out of the room then to catch up with the other two, and Donghyuck tries to push down his worry.

-

By the time they get to the store, Donghyuck and Jeno are arguing, this time about whether or not Donghyuck should confess to Mark or not.

Jeno had brought it up as they’d walked out the wide doors of the school, and of course, Donghyuck had vehemently refused.

When they see the crowd around the store though, they both stop bickering. Mark is standing in the center of the throng, Yerim standing before him, hands on her hips.

“Well?” she says, “What’s your answer?”

Mark’s eyes search over the crowd over and over, and finally, he spots Jeno and Donghyuck walking up, confusion on both their faces. Donghyuck sees his stare linger on him, and then Mark bites his lip.

He says, “Was it you?”

Jaemin nudges his way through the students, catches Donghyuck’s elbow and ducks down to whisper into his ear, “Yerim said she wants to get back together with Mark.”

Donghyuck’s blood runs cold. He feels frozen in place, helpless as Mark asks again, “Did you leave me those notes?”

Yerim looks around the crowd. She blinks as if gathering her bearings and says, “It was me.”

Jeno lets out a sharp exhale, and Jaemin’s eyes widen. In front of them, Mark nods slowly.

Donghyuck is overtaken with dread. He should have known it would never work. Mark has never been his and will never be his. It was stupid of him to even think that something as juvenile as writing notes would work.

“Let’s talk about this privately,” Mark suggests, eyes skimming over the crowd again.

Slowly, people begin to disperse, and Yerim takes Mark’s hand, leads him away towards a set of tables a little ways from the other ones.

Donghyuck still can’t move. His breath comes too quick and short, and Jeno takes his hand, squeezing it gently. “Hyuck,” he says softly, rubbing his thumb along Donghyuck’s knuckles.

“What…” Jaemin cuts himself off, “It was you, wasn’t it?”

Over Donghyuck’s head, Jeno nods solemnly.

“Oh, baby,” Jaemin murmurs, gathering Donghyuck in a long hug.

Jaemin’s good at hugs. He rubs his broad palms soothingly along Donghyuck’s back, tucking the smaller boy’s head into the crook of his neck. “This is so messed up,” he says over Donghyuck’s shoulder.

The thing is, Donghyuck _likes_ Yerim. She’s just as sweet as Mark, always offering to help out anyone struggling with their homework, complimenting Donghyuck’s hair when he’d dyed it red the previous summer. If she’d known that it had been Donghyuck, she’d never have claimed the notes were hers.

But Donghyuck hadn’t stepped up, and now it’s another missed opportunity.

Jaemin lets go just in time for Donghyuck to watch Mark pull Yerim into a loose, one armed embrace. He takes a deep breath. Mark’s dated other people before, and so has he. This is no different.

Mark makes his way back over to them, and Jaemin says, “So? What did she say?”

Mark shrugs. “I don’t think it was her. I asked her what the notes said and she couldn’t tell me.”

“No, you idiot,” Jaemin shakes his head, “What did you say to her confession?”

“Oh,” he shifts his weight uncomfortably. “I told her that I wasn’t interested. I’m into someone else now.”

Donghyuck’s throat feels closed up, his hands curling into fists at his sides. Of course, Mark has someone else he likes now. Mark’s smart and nice and sometimes, when he’s not being annoying, a little cute.

“Who are you into now?” Jeno asks. Donghyuck really hopes Mark doesn’t read into the way they’re standing – slightly in front of Donghyuck’s frame as if to block him from view.

Looking between Jaemin and Jeno, Mark furrows his eyebrows. “It’s… a secret,” he says slowly. “Why are you guys being so weird?”

“Let’s go get food before they run out of strawberry milk,” Donghyuck interrupts loudly, pushing his way through Jaemin and Jeno’s bodies. “You guys are all being so weird. It must be the heat.”

He waves his hands around as if mimicking heat waves, and Mark’s face slowly relaxes. “I guess it is the weather,” he relents.

He takes Mark’s hand and drags him across the road to the store, knowing that Jeno and Jaemin will follow behind.

And if Mark intertwining their fingers is purposeful or just out of habit, Donghyuck doesn’t want to know which it is.

-

Mark Lee is very strange, in Donghyuck’s (not so) humble opinion.

Mark comes to watch Donghyuck sing at a local café sometimes, and he’s the only one who knows about it.

Donghyuck would never tell anyone about how much he likes singing. His parents, no matter how supportive and loving, had already called it an unviable career option and crossed it off the list. 

Mark though. Mark has three whole guitars and even volunteers to teach Donghyuck how to play, and even if their so-called lessons only lead to them getting distracted by other things, it’s the thought that counts.

Mark hears him warming up his voice in a practice room after school one day towards the end of their first year of high school while he’s waiting for basketball practice to start, and Donghyuck nearly has a heart attack when the older boy cries out, “That was _you_ singing? Dude, what the fuck?”

Donghyuck flushes warmly, shrugging and making a vague excuse. “Not really,” he says, fingers pulling nervously at the buttons of his uniform shirt. “Just to myself.”

It had been around the time Donghyuck had just barely started having feelings for him, and Mark’s face lighting up only exacerbates the clamminess of his palms and the shakiness in his voice.

Only a month later, Mark had approached him with a flyer, excitedly speaking too fast for Donghyuck to understand because his accent had still been too thick, words slurring together.

“Slow down,” Donghyuck had said, and Mark had to start again.

“There’s an open mic night at this café, and I think you should go sing,” Mark explains again, this time slower, the words enunciated one by one.

“No thanks,” Donghyuck says immediately, taking the flyer and tossing it in the trash bin.

It takes seven more ripped up posters and two weeks of begging for Donghyuck to agree to one trial night. He messes up three times, stumbling over the lyrics, making the mic resonate feedback, and he has no idea how to hype up a crowd up or make them like him, but just being up on the makeshift stage is enough for his heart to pound in his chest. Afterwards, Mark catches him in a tight hug and tells him, “I’m so proud of you.”

He hasn’t stopped performing since then.

They make it a point to come down to the café at least once a month, and sometimes Mark plays guitar for him, harmonizing. Other times, it’s just Donghyuck and his phone playing instrumentals over the shitty sound system, Mark watching from the audience with a cup of coffee in front of him.

It’s nights like these that Donghyuck gets a tiny inkling of hope that maybe Mark will like him back one day. When he’s on stage, the last notes fading, Mark looks at him with such an expression of reverence, his wide eyes shining bright with affection, grin pulling his mouth wide.

(It’s a hopeless kind of wish, one that he knows will never come true, but sometimes Donghyuck imagines coming off stage and leaping into Mark’s arms, kissing him full on the mouth.)

Tonight, Donghyuck performs some sappy love ballad. It’s a new solo release from the lead singer of an idol group Donghyuck only vaguely knows about, but it suits his voice well.

Mark is talking to one of the waiters when he glances over. Some tall guy who has to stoop over to talk to him, his grin wide and infectious. Mark grins back, and Donghyuck’s hands tighten around the mic.

The guy’s way too close for it to be casual, and as Donghyuck finishes up the song, he throws his handsome head back and laughs, Mark grinning along.

Donghyuck’s blood boils. He grabs the mic, and before he can help himself, he snaps, eyes stinging with tears, “That one was for the person with the most beautiful laugh I’ve ever seen. Maybe he’ll get his head out of his ass one day and understand that.”

Then, before the owner can come chastise him, before he can get a look at Mark’s reaction, he grabs his phone from the sound guy and rushes to the door.

It’s warm outside, and Donghyuck doesn’t have the comfort of Mark’s brother’s car to rely on now, so he starts striding towards the bus stop a block down the street. The sun had set while they were in the café, and Donghyuck isn’t sure where exactly the bus stops, but his heart’s pounding so hard he can feel it in his palms, panic fresh in his mind.

He’d blurted it out before he could find it in him to hold his tongue, and he hadn’t even managed to see Mark’s reaction. God, he’s half certain that Mark is going to hate him now, or blame him for ruining their friendship.

Behind him, the door of the café swings open with a telltale jingle and Donghyuck hears feet slapping the pavement as Mark runs down the empty sidewalk, calling out, “Donghyuck, wait up!”

Donghyuck certainly does _not_ wait up. He speeds his pace up, but Mark is an athlete, so even powerwalking, he’s caught up to the younger boy, catching him by the wrist and pulling him to a stop.

“Why did you run?” Mark asks, his voice unbearably soft. It feels like a caress, and Donghyuck flinches away.

“Because you make me feel like a loser,” Donghyuck says, and the hurt across Mark’s face helps him steel his nerves to continue. “And because I’m scared of whatever this is.” He makes a vague gesture between them, and Mark’s frown grows deeper.

“I was waiting for you,” he says, “Since the first note. I didn’t get why you weren’t saying anything. I couldn’t tell if it was a joke or not.”

It dawns on Donghyuck then, exactly what Mark is saying. His blood might as well turn to ice.

“You _knew_?” he demands sharply. “And you didn’t say anything this whole time? You asked Yerim right in front of me and you knew?”

Mark seems to realize his mistake, shock taking up his face quick. “I—Yeah, I knew, but—”

That’s all Donghyuck has to hear. He feels like an idiot.

He wrenches his wrist free, ignoring the pain because Mark had been holding on tightly, and keeps walking towards the bus stand. When Mark calls after him again, he shouts, “Fuck off and leave me alone!”

Thankfully, Mark understands his off mood and keeps his distance, leaning one shoulder against a street sign, crossing his arms across his chest. Donghyuck comes to a stop under the bus sign.

Mark stays standing on the sidewalk until the bus comes, and only when Donghyuck gets on and takes a seat does he see the older boy turn around and begin slowly heading for his car.

-

Donghyuck doesn’t let himself break down until he’s in the safety of Jaemin’s house. The tears start flowing as soon as Jaemin lets him in, his hair wet and freshly showered, dressed down in shorts and a loose old shirt.

Jaemin pulls the story from him thread by thread, and as pathetic as Donghyuck finds it to be sobbing in front of Jaemin’s little brother, Jisung is also a big help in calming him down. He insists, “Call him up, hyung, I’ll fight him for you.”

Donghyuck hiccups over a laugh. Jisung and Jaemin are easily the tallest but also the softest pair of brothers he’s ever met. Sure, Jisung looks like he could beat the hell out of Mark with one hand tied behind his back, but he’d probably start crying the second he hits Mark.

After a while, Donghyuck’s crying slows to the occasional sniffle, and Jaemin ushers Jisung from the room. He shuts it behind him and says, “Do you want to sleep over?”

Donghyuck nods, already tossing his shirt off and to the floor, walking over to Jaemin’s closet to rummage around for clothing.

Jaemin snorts in amusement. “You don’t waste any time,” he says dryly.

Donghyuck’s been here too many times to not feel at home anymore. He sticks his tongue out at Jaemin, who giggles and flops down onto the bed. “You know,” he says as Donghyuck changes out of his clothes and shoots a text to his mother to let her know he’s staying the night, “Mark’s probably just as lost about all this as you are.”

“How do you mean?” Donghyuck pushes him towards the other side of the bed and slides under the blanket. Jaemin turns to face him, his hair falling all over his face and into his eyes.

Jaemin’s lips twist as he chews on the inside of his cheek. “How would you feel if you found out that I had feelings for you this whole time? Or Jeno?”

Donghyuck bites his lip. “Afraid that it would mess up our friendship,” he admits honestly.

But Mark is different. Jaemin and Jeno have been his two best friends since middle school, but he knows they’d never develop feelings for him, or vice versa. Mark had come into his life, and he’d thought of the older boy as a potential love interest from the start.

“Exactly,” Jaemin says, startling him out of his thoughts. “He’s probably scared it’s going to mess up our dynamics. Especially now that we’re about to be out of school and everything’s changing.”

Donghyuck frowns. “I don’t want everything to change.”

“Of course not, babe, but it’s inevitable.” Jaemin sighs deeply, exhaling and wrapping his long arms around Donghyuck. It’s a comfortable familiar feeling. Jaemin reaches over his shoulder, flicks the table lamp off, and lets Donghyuck curl up against him.

After a minute of silence in the dark, with only the steady beat of Jaemin’s heart to keep him company, Donghyuck whispers, “Nana?”

“Yes, baby,” Jaemin murmurs, his voice slipping quieter. The arms around him are growing more slack and heavy as Jaemin drifts off.

Donghyuck says, “Even if things change, I don’t want to lose you guys.”

“You’d never,” Jaemin says back, “Even if Mark isn’t good at feelings, he loves you too. Just remember that.”

Objectively, he knows Mark loves him. He just doesn’t know if it’s enough.

Even ensconced under all of Jaemin’s blankets, with the younger boy’s comforting presence all around him, Donghyuck doesn’t sleep well that night.

-

Donghyuck spends the weekend lazing about the house and terrorizing his younger brothers, snapping at them whenever they bother him about using the TV after him, justifying himself with, “I’m moving out soon, so you may as well let me enjoy my time here while you still have me.”

There are seven missed calls on his phone from MARK LEE, big capital English letters, and he’s let them all go to voice mail. There are even more messages in his inbox, but he deletes them without looking.

It’s not until Sunday night that Donghyuck receives the most ominous text from Jeno and begins to worry.

It just says, _Mark’s headed to your house, don’t freak out._

Of course, Donghyuck freaks out.

He paces around his room, stressing the fuck out. It’s midnight, and his parents and siblings are definitely asleep. The only reason he’s even awake is that he’s attempting to finish up some last-minute homework.

He contemplates pretending to be asleep, but then there’s a sharp noise, and Donghyuck nearly jumps out of his skin. It had come from the window.

Curiosity gets the better of him, and slowly, he walks over, pulling the curtain aside.

Outside, Mark’s standing under his window, one of his old acoustic guitars in his hands, snapback pulling his hair back, and Donghyuck’s heart skips a beat.

He pulls the window open.

“Hyuck,” Mark says, and Donghyuck’s kind of surprised his voice even carries this far, all the way up to the window. “I’m really sorry for being so stupid. Please talk to me, I miss you so much.”

Fucking Mark Lee and his ability to know exactly what words will make Donghyuck’s legs shake.

Donghyuck sticks his head out the window, calls back down, “You’re an idiot. Go home before I wake my parents up.”

Mark makes a noise like a scoff. “You know they like me better than you anyways. They’d probably invite me inside.”

Donghyuck makes to shove himself back inside, and Mark says hurriedly, “Wait, wait wait, Hyuck. Please. I’m sorry, let me just— Let me just try this, okay?”

Donghyuck is still retreating inside the window when Mark begins strumming and stops him short, the upper half of his body still outside, feet pushed up onto his tiptoes inside.

Mark’s not a better singer than him by far, but his voice is soft and sweet and god, does he know how to carry a tune. Mark _knows_ how much Donghyuck loves it when he sings, and now the older boy’s looking up at him like he’d hung the moon, voice breaking sweetly over the notes he can’t reach, and Donghyuck wants to badly to run downstairs, throw open the door and kiss him silly.

It’s a sappy love song – one they make fun of whenever it comes on the radio, and Donghyuck barely understands because it’s in English, but it’s heart-melting nonetheless. He forces himself not to get lost in the sound.

“Mark,” Donghyuck interrupts, “You can’t just do this shit. We’re not in Canada and this isn’t some shitty teenage rom-com.”

Mark calls back, “So I jumped your gate for nothing? Come on, I should get extra points for that. They don’t even have gates in front of houses in Canada.”

Donghyuck’s will to resist dissolves so easily under Mark’s charming grin, and he hates himself for how quickly he’s fallen into this trap again, powerless against his own emotions.

Mark strums his guitar again, calls up playfully, “If you come down and hear me out, maybe I’ll stop playing and leave.”

Donghyuck wants nothing more than to close the window and go to sleep, but Mark’s going to wake up the neighbors at this rate, and the aunty next door is definitely going to complain to his mother about Donghyuck’s _obnoxious friends_ the next morning.

Donghyuck sighs, closes the window, and slips downstairs as quietly as possibly. The stairs squeak under his feet sometimes, making him wince and freeze until he’s sure his parents and siblings are still fast asleep. He only dares to release a deep exhale when the front door is shut behind him.

Mark is still standing under his window, strumming random chords on his guitar, slender fingers dancing along the strings easily.

“I hate you,” Donghyuck greets him.

Mark’s face falls into a frown, and Donghyuck wants to kiss the swell of his lower lip. “I know,” he says softly.

“You knew it was me the whole time, and you still let me suffer. You pretended to believe Yerim when you _knew_ it was fucking with me.”

“Hyuck,” Mark swallows hard, “Hyuck, please. I’m _sorry_. I didn’t mean to play with your feelings or anything. I thought you didn’t want me to know, so I pretended I didn’t. I didn’t realize it was hurting you.”

“Well it did,” Donghyuck says stubbornly, arms crossed in front of his chest. “So just fuck off.”

He turns, ready to go back inside, but Mark catches his shoulder and pulls him back. Donghyuck opens his mouth to tell him to stop but stops short as soon as they’re face to face, the words getting stuck in his throat when Mark looks at him with such sincerity shining in his eyes.

“Please,” Mark pleads, “You know I wouldn’t hurt you on purpose. I was waiting until you were ready to tell me for yourself.”

“What if I never told you? What would you have done then?”

Mark visibly hesitates, then, with a determined voice, he says, “This,” and pulls Donghyuck to him.

For a second, Donghyuck’s freefalling, mind everywhere at once, on Mark’s hands curling around his arm, on Mark’s chest against his, and then, Mark’s lips press to his, and Donghyuck knows nothing else.

Mark’s hand slides from his arm up to his neck, and curls around the nape so carefully, gentle like he doesn’t want to do anything to ruin the moment. It’s a sweet kiss, soft and slow, Donghyuck’s toes curling in his sandals, eyes shutting automatically.

When Mark pulls away, it’s with dark, dazed eyes and a shiny wet mouth.

“Please,” he says again.

Donghyuck’s mind is in chaos, half of him pleading with him to grab Mark by the front of the shirt and pull him into another kiss, the other half screaming at him to tell the older boy to get away from him. His feelings are jumbled, too much happening all at once.

He says, “Mark, I need to think.”

“Of course,” Mark says at once, letting go of him and taking a step back, “Think as much as you need. I just needed to— needed to let you know. I needed to kiss you at least once, before all this is over and we’re going to college and we run out of time.”

Donghyuck’s had the same thought so many times. It’s the main reason he’d started all this in the first place.

He takes a step back, closer to the front of the house. “Give me a couple days.”

Mark inclines his head. “You’re still my best friend,” he adds softly, “You’ll always be, even if you decide you don’t want me like that anymore.”

Donghyuck nods sharply, and Mark smiles at him, soft and uncertain, before grabbing his guitar and slipping towards the shadowy gate.

For a long time, Donghyuck stands there in his pajamas, fingers pressed to his lips, his skin burning everywhere they’d been touching.

-

Donghyuck feels bad about how easy it is to manipulate his mother into letting him stay home the next day. All he has to do is cough once, throw her a wide-eyed look, and she ushers him back to bed, sympathy and concern written all over her face.

He’s still shaken up from Mark’s actions the night before, and he needs time to clear his thoughts, to understand his feelings more clearly.

It’s funny how this is all he’s wanted for so long, but now, when it’s right in front of him and within reach, he can’t find it in him to say yes.

He spends the day in bed, periodically listing the pros and cons of loving Mark Lee.

_Pros. He loves you back. He’s always here for you. He’s Mark Lee and you love everything about him._

_Cons. He’s got a million other things to worry about. He knew you loved him and didn’t do anything about it. He’s Mark Lee and you love everything about him._

He’s more than a little conflicted.

Around four, when his siblings come trampling home from school one by one, Donghyuck hears a familiar voice in the hall talking to one of his brothers.

“Your hyung really is weird,” Jeno is saying when he opens the door to Donghyuck’s room.

Donghyuck whines from his bed, “Stop trash talking me.”

“Stop trash talking me,” Jeno mocks, voice pitching higher like Donghyuck’s. Behind him, as he shuts the door, Donghyuck’s brother giggles. Donghyuck glares at him.

“You okay?” Jeno asks when the door’s locked and they’re alone. “Mark told me what happened last night.”

He takes a seat at the edge of Donghyuck’s bed, reaching a hand out and squeezing Donghyuck’s ankle.

“I’m so dumb,” Donghyuck says, his face half buried in his pillow. “Why am I so dumb?”

“It’s just who you are,” Jeno teases softly. “Come on, Nana’s going to be here any second, and he said he’s going to beat you up if you’re still moping.”

Donghyuck sighs melodramatically, flopping over onto his back. “Why can’t I just get over myself and take it now that it’s being handed to me?”

Jeno flops down next to him, reaching out a hand to dig it into Donghyuck’s side. “Because you’re dumb,” Jeno says, but then his eyes gentle, and he says, “It’s okay to be hesitant, Hyuck.”

“But how much of it is hesitating and how much of it is just me being too scared to face my feelings now that I know he reciprocates them?”

“Being scared is normal too.” Jeno turns over onto his side, blows into Donghyuck’s ear, making the younger boy squeal and push him away.

He falls back onto the mattress grinning. “You need to talk things through. All this time by yourself is making you self-doubt.”

Donghyuck hums, grabbing Jeno’s shirt and holding on. “Things just had to go to shit in our last couple weeks of school, didn’t they?”

“That’s probably why it’s going to shit.”

In hindsight, Jeno’s probably right. The end of their school days had made Donghyuck gutsy in a way he’d never been before.

They lie around for a little longer until Jeno’s phone buzzes in his pocket where it’s pressed against Donghyuck’s thigh, and Donghyuck reaches down, fishes it out from Jeno’s tight jean and holds it up to look at the notification.

“It’s Nana,” he says with some surprise. He punches in Jeno’s passcode and opens up the text. It says simply, _operation is go._

“You set me up!” Donghyuck realizes in horror, “You’re scheming, you—you’re plotting!”

“Sorry, honey,” Jeno grins sheepishly, “It was Nana’s idea.”

Of course it is. Everyone always assumes the bad ideas are Donghyuck’s, but more often than not, it’s Jaemin who is behind them.

Jeno’s already getting up before Donghyuck can react, grabbing his bag from the ground and swinging it over his shoulder. “Let me know how it goes,” he says, way too cheerfully.

Donghyuck’s still dumbfounded, sitting on the bed when Jeno slips out of the room. In the hall, he hears a very familiar voice. A very _Mark Lee_ voice.

Donghyuck leaps up, acting on instinct when he runs to the door and slams it shut, clicking the lock so fast he nearly gets whiplash.

From the other side of the door, Mark’s voice comes quietly. “Hyuck, open the door.”

“No,” Donghyuck says, feeling very much like a petulant child when he sinks down to sit in front of the shut door.

From the thin line of light that bleeds into his room from the hall outside, he sees Mark’s feet stop right before his room, and then, as Mark sits down, his back against the door, the light’s obscured.

Warily, Donghyuck listens through the door as Mark says something too quiet for him to discern, and then there are pounding footsteps down the hall that recede and then come back a minute later.

Donghyuck waits until the footsteps fade again before he says stubbornly, “There’s nothing you can do to make me open the door.”

Mark doesn’t respond.

There’s a few minutes of silence, and then, a small slithering noise as something’s shoved into the space under the door. It’s a piece of paper.

Donghyuck holds his breath, picking it up and unfolding it. Mark’s sharp, untidy handwriting sprawls across it.

_You may think my laugh is beautiful, but you don’t know how beautiful your smile is._

Donghyuck swallows hard. A second later, another note slides through.

_I love it when you’re happy. You’re radiant._

Another.

_You don’t have to admire me from afar. I’ll never leave your side._

Donghyuck hates how the cliché words make his heart pound in his chest, his breath coming short.

His hands shake when he reaches up and turns the door handle. Mark Lee is the biggest idiot he’s ever met, but god, does Donghyuck love him with every inch of his being.

Mark falls into the room when he swings the door open with a tiny cry of pain, and he straightens slowly, strangely bashful when he meets Donghyuck’s eyes.

“I really am sorry,” he says weakly.

Donghyuck answers him with a kiss.

Their first kiss had Donghyuck shaky with confusion and doubt. This one fills him with assurance and warmth as Mark’s hands find their way to his neck, curling around the warm skin and pulling him closer. His own fingers tangle into Mark’s dark hair, and for a moment, it’s like they’re suspended in time, with nothing but the feeling of warm body against body, hearts thudding in tandem in their chests.

Then, Donghyuck’s youngest brother says from the hallway, “ _Ew_ ,” and the moment is broken.

Donghyuck pulls away to shriek some choice words at him, and when he turns back, Mark’s grinning so wide, he looks like his face is about to split into two.

Donghyuck can’t help but grin back.

-

They decide to relocate to Mark’s house, because they have a lot of kissing to make up for and Mark’s brother isn’t nearly as annoying as Donghyuck’s.

After fending off offers of food and drinks from Mark’s parents, they make it to his room in one piece, giddy with anticipation.

The second the door’s shut, Mark takes his hands, pushes him gently against the door and says, voice barely a whisper, “Can I kiss you again?”

Donghyuck pretends to think about it. “Maybe,” he sighs, and Mark throws him a faux-wounded look before closing the distance between them, taking Donghyuck’s face in his hands and kissing him.

Mark’s lips are slow on his, his tongue lazily licking into Donghyuck’s mouth, the hands on his cheeks brushing gently against his skin as Mark strokes his knuckles carefully down the side of his face. Donghyuck sighs into his mouth, and Mark’s lips curl into a smile against his.

“Stay for a while?” He breathes, and Donghyuck can’t do anything but nod mutely.

They kiss again, this time with more fervor, Mark’s hands slipping down to press to his hips, and Donghyuck arches up off the door, their bodies brushing together, warm and tingling with sensation. A spark of excitement shoots up Donghyuck’s spine, and he wraps his arms tight around Mark’s shoulders, holding him tightly so the older boy can’t pull away.

They make it to Mark’s bed somehow, lips locked, hands heavy over each other’s clothes, and Donghyuck’s flat on it in a second, Mark’s legs on either side of his thighs.

Mark’s hands are all over him, slender fingers sneaking past the hem of his shirt to the soft span of his stomach, and then higher, to his chest. Mark’s palm presses over his sternum, and Donghyuck stares at him through the dark.

“Your heart’s beating so loud,” Mark whispers, his eyes wide, filled with something intense that makes Donghyuck’s cheeks heat up.

“How did you know it was me, anyways?”

Mark’s face is milky pale in the dark, the high points of his face bathed in silver like he’d taken a dip in moonlight. He turns, thin lips turning up in the ghost of a smile. “Did you think I wouldn’t recognize your handwriting after sitting next to you for four years?”

Donghyuck blushes hotly, turns his face to the side and says, “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”

“I notice every little thing about you,” Mark muses, curling a finger into the collar of Donghyuck’s shirt to pull him closer and catch him in another kiss full on the mouth.

Donghyuck thinks he’ll never get enough of this – Mark’s lips are soft, slightly chapped because he has a habit of licking them when he’s nervous, thin against his plush mouth, and his hands come to close around the nape of his neck, holding him closer to deepen the kiss that turns into two, then three, and their mouths are still connected.

They’re both panting and out of breath when they break apart, and Mark lays back on the bed, eyes falling shut, chest rising and falling rapidly.

Donghyuck hesitates for one second, then curls into his side, his head on Mark’s shoulder, and Mark’s arm comes automatically to wrap around his back, holding him closer.

“This is gross,” Donghyuck giggles, nuzzling into Mark’s neck to kiss the warm skin there.

“You’re gross.” Mark squirms at the feeling, but eventually they find a comfortable position, Donghyuck curled into the circle of Mark’s arms.

He knows he has to go home eventually, but here, with Mark’s warm arms wrapped around him, their fingers linked together loosely, he feels a kind of slow, glowing calmness wash over him.

Everything is uncertain right now. Their futures, their relationship that’s barely begun, where they will end up in a couple months, but Donghyuck feels Mark’s fingers tighten around his, and he feels sure of one thing.

Mark is an idiot, a mess, annoying beyond anything he’s ever experienced, kind, beautiful, and after a lot of foolishness and misunderstanding, he’s Donghyuck’s.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/_johnten) / [cc](https://curiouscat.me/slimequeen)


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